12 ms·

Born of Reddit, Imgur now dwarfs the ‘front page of the Internet’

259 points by r0h1n 13y ago

TheBiv 13y ago
Awesome example of a company that doesn't try to be everything to everyone and just focuses on the one thing they do very well. Just please don't try and emulate their success in your startup, bc it likely won't work. These guys won the side-project lottery so an amazing kudos to them.
- nonchalance 13y ago
  > These guys won the side-project lottery This is far from the truth. There was a clear demand for free image hosting that is easy to work with, and imgur fit the bill.
  - carleverett 13y ago
    That doesn't mean it wasn't a side project. I'm not sure, but I'll bet Alan Schaaf got pretty deep into Imgur before he quit his day job for it.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    - Dru89 13y ago
      I think nonchalance is arguing more to the point that this was not a "lottery winner." It was a good idea from the start, because it filled a need people actually knew about, instead of filling a need that people didn't know they had yet.
      - carleverett 13y ago
        Ahh poor reading on my behalf. Valid point, although many people build side projects that fulfill a valid need that never get adapted. You usually don't have the luxury of a marketing budget or the time to promote your idea effectively when it's just your side project. Then again that's the beauty of Reddit - 1 front page post = 10's of thousands of hits.
      - codexon 13y ago
        It was a need that people had, but there was no chance of making a profit without the good will of Reddit users trying to help them get ad views and bury submissions from other image dumps. The founder also made a thread claiming it was a "gift" to Reddit while also saying the same thing to Digg.
    - Mizza 13y ago
      I've met Alan a few times - he told me he was in college when he started it, and the original imgur was run off of a server in his dorm room, and he later moved to a CDN run by somebody else he met on reddit. He's a cool guy, really humble on the rumble.
  - SwellJoe 13y ago
    I remember the post that launched imgur. It really was a scratch your own itch kind of thing. So many redditors complained about the crappy image sharing sites...lots of them were verboten to use on reddit because they were so spammy, or slow, or whatever. There was no clear leader in the image sharing space. Facebook was impossible (because it wants to own every user and won't let you show someone something without logging in), even if it were an acceptable place to upload weird random pictures (I know many people who do, but they just don't know about reddit and imgur yet). So...imgur's founder saw a very clear need, and humbly pointed redditors to it. It took off because it was amazing in its simplicity and sincerity. imgur's founder clearly wanted you to share funny pictures in imgur, even if he couldn't figure out how to make it pay him money for every image. He just wanted to solve a very real problem that caused millions of people tiny amounts of pain. (When picking a problem, pick one that causes either a few people a lot of pain, or one that causes a lot of people a little bit of pain. You're unlikely to find a problem that causes a lot of people a lot of pain, since those are already usually very competitive.)
    - timdiggerm 13y ago
      > Facebook was impossible (because it wants to own every user and won't let you show someone something without logging in) Well that's not true. Just get the image url and you're good to go.
      - code_duck 13y ago
        Facebook denies images based on their privacy controls even if you are viewing a .jpg URL. People try to share those links often on a forum on which I'm a member, and when you view the link not logged in to FB or not connected to the proper proper 'friend', you receive a 'this content is not currently available' message.
    - yxhuvud 13y ago
      Well, they are either very competetive or extremely hard to solve. Think cancer.
      - 13y ago
  - erichurkman 13y ago
    Others tried and largely failed. Min.us, photobucket, ... were all OK at 10 or 20 viewers, but when you hit the front page, the top-rated post was an Imgur mirror that [usually] responded to direct .png/.jpg links without fault.
  - lazyjones 13y ago
    > There was a clear demand for free image hosting that is easy to work with, and imgur fit the bill. There are plenty of these around, so I doubt it was being free and simple that made them "win" (we have an ad-free one with even simpler UI, for example). There were 2 factors that contributed most to their success in my opinion: a) being used much on Reddit, b) being awesome at implementing many useful, well-designed features. Without a), they would probably still have won this race, but at a much slower pace.
    - Terretta 13y ago
      On the contrary: - low latency (images served instantly) - no ads (initially) - upload, get link Initially there were zero features. The pace was entirely based on serving images fast. Everything else you think of imgur came later.
- beambot 13y ago
  What part of their success shouldn't you emulate? Are you suggesting people shouldn't do side projects because they might not be wildly successful? That doesn't sound like good advice. Sure, if you never try, you can never fail -- but you can also never succeed.
  - TheBiv 13y ago
    Solid questions and the point that is a risky piece to be emulated is the only have one thing.
001sky 13y ago
Aside from the traffic milestone, another crop of impressive Imgur numbers involves the amount of funding the company has taken, which is exactly zero since launching in 2006. The company is also profitable, and it has been since about a year after the site launched. Interesting to see where this goes.[1] It is a great story. [1] see, eg: http://techcrunch.com/2007/05/07/myspace-to-acquire-photobucket-for-250-million/ http://techcrunch.com/2007/05/07/myspace-to-acquire-photobuc...
adventured 13y ago
Imgur solved a problem for Reddit the same way TwitPic solved a problem for Twitter. I think it's a testament to Reddit that - unlike Twitter - they didn't feel like they needed to consume image hosting for their platform. It also spurred the growth of the meme sites. I'm sure Reddit will spawn more large niche sites yet.
- agumonkey 13y ago
  For some heavily graphical subreddits (r/funny and such) the imgur subcategory is almost better, you skim faster through a gallery than through titles list.
thejosh 13y ago
I remember when this started, and I was amazed that the guy was willing to risk massive fees for little reward (at the time). Very happy they have grown it into what it is today - fast, clean and stable. It's what imageshack could have been.
- Pxtl 13y ago
  Exactly. When I first saw Imgur, my immediate reaction was "nice site, but this guy is going to bankrupt himself in a few months - look at the horrible ways other image-sharers have to abuse their users to stay profitable". I didn't think it was sustainable. Shows what I know.
- bostonpete 13y ago
  I vaguely recall this as well. Wasn't there a migration to imgur in response to some backlash against an alternative service that was doing something that pissed off redditors? Or maybe I'm thinking of a different controversy...
treelovinhippie 13y ago
I've always thought Reddit as a community and platform was massively under-leveraged. So what other problems do Redditors have? My Reddit experience these days seems to be nothing more than using RES to scroll through images. I miss the good old days of in-depth discussions that were across the site and not just pushed into subreddits.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- baq 13y ago
  you want to be in a moderated subreddit (e.g. r/askscience), there's too many people for an interesting discussion otherwise.
- redthrowaway 13y ago
  > So what other problems do Redditors have? Ironically, content discovery. Reddit's biggest problem is that the big subreddits are incredibly homogenous, and the small ones incredibly slow. If you want to read good, in-depth analysis of world affairs, then you'd better agree with the popular sentiment on /r/worldnews or /r/truereddit. If you don't, you're SOL. Often, the good content you find is in the comments. However, this necessitates digging through thousands of comments that are generally low-content. This causes pain. Want to solve a problem redditors have? Find a way to separate the wheat from the chaff.
  - idProQuo 13y ago
    > Reddit's biggest problem is that the big subreddits are incredibly homogenous, and the small ones incredibly slow. There's definitely middle ground though. /r/DepthHub is pretty good at aggregating solid comments. And there's good debate on subs like /r/ChangeMyView and /r/NeutralPolitics. Admittedly, these subs don't refresh as fast as /r/worldnews, but there's usually new content every day.
  - TillE 13y ago
    There's no "good, in-depth analysis" of anything on the default subreddits, regardless of your political leanings. The whole demographic and mentality has shifted towards younger and younger teenagers. What you really need is reddit for adults, a site with an entirely different culture that leaves the memes and unfunny jokes behind in favor of encouraging actual conversation on any given topic.
Lrigikithumer 13y ago
I think a bit tribute to Imgur's success is the fact that it has the same content as reddit's front page, just a lot less of the internal politics and bitter comments that tend to drive people away from the site.
codexon 13y ago
The reason why Imgur got so big was because all the other image upload providers started monetizing themselves by blocking direct links and limiting traffic. No one else wanted to be stuck with huge bandwidth bills on hard to monetize reddit visitors where most of them have adblock. For some reason people feel obligated to link to the Imgur page instead of directly to the image. This allows Imgur to make money off the ads on the page. Maybe this is because the founder made it seem like he made the site just to solve Reddit's image hosting problems for free(he also made a similar announcement on Digg). Without this support and the growth of unlimited bandwidth servers, I don't think Imgur would have became so big. If they decide to disallow hotlinking or add more intrusive ads, another replacement would pop up. This is probably why the founder wants to focus on getting revenue in a different way.
- deleted 13y ago
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  - deleted 13y ago
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- stdgy 13y ago
  I'd like to add that they also provide many useful features, like nice album views and bulk downloads. And I suspect those useful features, combined with the eye-friendly design, help make people much more likely to paste non-direct links.
  - codexon 13y ago
    But the question is: Would those other image dumps would have stopped putting in hotlink protection if they knew people would change back to non-direct links? Or is it because the founder of imgur told people he made imgur just to help Reddit users? Before imgur, most links were direct. The answer to this question should be interesting to entrepreneurs here: Is it a good strategy to create a business for a large social network under the pretense of public good? Is the sheer number of users more important than how monetizable they are and the likelihood they will reciprocate?
Maxious 13y ago
Relevant reddit links: http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/7zlyd/my_gift_to_reddit_i_created_an_image_hosting http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/7zlyd/my_gift_to... (2009 - launch of imgur after 2 months of side project coding) http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/9tlwi/im_the_imgur_guy_ama/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/9tlwi/im_the_imgur_guy... (2010) http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/y81ju/i_created_imgur_ama/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/y81ju/i_created_imgur_... (2011) http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/eicjf/im_the_imgur_guy_ama_part_two/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/eicjf/im_the_imgur_guy... (2012)
GuiA 13y ago
I remember having that itch a few years before imgur happened; I shared a lot of screenshots with friends. I wrote a PHP script that did fast upload with a minimalistic look and popped in on a server and bought a domain name for it; it got used pretty heavily in my group of nerdy high school/college friends. But I never gave it any more thought, and just open sourced it a few years later (it's on my github I believe).
Sir_Cmpwn 13y ago
If you guys do want an alternative, I'm struggling to get MediaCrush [1] more popular. It's a lot better [2], but imgur is imgur. The hardest part is that Reddit (admins and moderators, that is) is actively supportive of imgur and actively hostile towards alternatives. [1] https://mediacru.sh https://mediacru.sh [2] https://blog.mediacru.sh/2013/07/19/MediaCrush-for-nerds.html https://blog.mediacru.sh/2013/07/19/MediaCrush-for-nerds.htm...
- Mizza 13y ago
  I found a bug: http://i.imgur.com/AvcOQXE.png http://i.imgur.com/AvcOQXE.png (I wasn't trying to be snarky by using imgur - it's just that you guys don't allow paste from clipboard yet and I'm on linux)
  - Sir_Cmpwn 13y ago
    Which browser? I'm on Linux and you can paste URLs on Chromium. Not on Firefox. Pasting images is half done.
    - Mizza 13y ago
      That's not the bug. The bug is that it says 'undefined'
      - Sir_Cmpwn 13y ago
        Well, in any case, I need some steps to reproduce if I hope to fix it.
      - jdiez17 13y ago
        It might be because we use `window.location.origin` to determine the media URL. This[1] post on StackOverflow suggest that only browsers based on Webkit or FF 21 and higher have it. What browser are you using? Can you please file an issue on GitHub[2] with as much information as possible so we can look into it? [1] http://stackoverflow.com/a/6167979/379195 http://stackoverflow.com/a/6167979/379195 [2] https://github.com/MediaCrush/MediaCrush/issues https://github.com/MediaCrush/MediaCrush/issues
ck2 13y ago
... and is just as unprofitable ? Not that profit is everything but are they losing money daily?
- AlisdairO 13y ago
  The article states they've been in profit since a year after operations began.
- danielsamuels 13y ago
  You can tell who didn't read the article before commenting.
gopalv 13y ago
imgur succeeded because you could press arrow-keys and browse through their most-viral dumps.
moozeek 13y ago
He started out with PHP (Kohana framework AFAIR), wonder if they still use it...
sequoia 13y ago
My take on why imgur is on top (I've been using & evangelizing it for a couple years): They initially picked one thing (image hosting) and did everything possible to remove barriers & friction to getting that task done. Ways to upload to imgur include clicking upload button, using file dialog; dragging and dropping onto the webpage; OSX dashboard widget (used this one when I was on mac); windows context menu (right click send to imgur); chrome extension; FF extension; bash script; wordpress plugin... basically any way you can think of, you can put images on imgur quickly. Oh and not blocking 3rd party referrers, and actually doing a good job of handling images makes a big difference. To the latter point: I was uploading images from iOS to wordpress but the orientation was in the EXIF data. WP ignored this so my images were rotated the wrong way... use `convert` to fix them 1x1 = pain in the ass. Select images, drag/drop onto desktop, group as album... surprise surprise: imgur orients the pictures properly automatically. The UX on imgur is what I'd call a case study of good UX, basically the best I've seen on any website. Kudos to imgur, they deserve all the success they're getting. /fanrant
- Peroni 13y ago
  Absolutely, 100% in agreement. It took me less than 5 seconds to upload this image and get my hands on a unique, neat URL leading to said image: http://i.imgur.com/1o3iJe1.gif http://i.imgur.com/1o3iJe1.gif The process: * Type: imgur.com & hit enter * Drag image from desktop and drop * Hit enter * Click (optional) * Done. No prompts to log in or create an account. No need to navigate to an 'upload' button. No prompts to share on various social media sites. No intrusive adverts. The sheer simplicity and convenience is immense.
  - 8ig8 13y ago
    With great power comes great responsibility. Probably not worth worrying too much, but it is important to keep in mind the terms of the site. Your cute or clever meme may end up on a T-shirt. > With regard to any file or content you upload to the public portions of our site, you grant Imgur a non-exclusive, royalty- free, perpetual, irrevocable worldwide license (with sublicense and assignment rights) to use, to display online and in any present or future media, to create derivative works of, to allow downloads of, and/or distribute any such file or content. To the extent that you delete a such file or content from the public portions of our site, the license you grant to Imgur pursuant to the preceding sentence will automatically terminate, but will not be revoked with respect to any file or content Imgur has already copied and sublicensed or designated for sublicense. Also, of course, anything you post to a public portion of our site may be used by the public pursuant to the following paragraph even after you delete it. http://imgur.com/tos http://imgur.com/tos
dvliman 13y ago
though I can't figure out how they monetize imgur..
theklub 13y ago
Countdown to imgur buy out...
Miyamoto 13y ago
Two questions: 1. Why is imgur not #1 on Google when I search for "image hosting". Postimage.org has that, but they take far less traffic than imgur. 2. When will we get video hosting that is as easy to use as imgur? That means not having to register to upload and share videos.
gcb0 13y ago
Makes one think decent image sharing is still an unsolved problem that any half done solution grows very fast. who here even heard about Game Neverending? ...what about Flickr?
dbuder 13y ago
What happens if they lose their default usage on reddit, just like quickmeme did? I'm not saying that will happen or that imgur hasn't reached the point where it isn't solely reliant on reddit, but it surely is a big risk to any valuation.

259 points by r0h1n 13y ago

Awesome example of a company that doesn't try to be everything to everyone and just focuses on the one thing they do very well. Just please don't try and emulate their success in your startup, bc it likely won't work. These guys won the side-project lottery so an amazing kudos to them.

nonchalance 13y ago
> These guys won the side-project lottery This is far from the truth. There was a clear demand for free image hosting that is easy to work with, and imgur fit the bill.
- carleverett 13y ago
  That doesn't mean it wasn't a side project. I'm not sure, but I'll bet Alan Schaaf got pretty deep into Imgur before he quit his day job for it.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - Dru89 13y ago
    I think nonchalance is arguing more to the point that this was not a "lottery winner." It was a good idea from the start, because it filled a need people actually knew about, instead of filling a need that people didn't know they had yet.
    - carleverett 13y ago
      Ahh poor reading on my behalf. Valid point, although many people build side projects that fulfill a valid need that never get adapted. You usually don't have the luxury of a marketing budget or the time to promote your idea effectively when it's just your side project. Then again that's the beauty of Reddit - 1 front page post = 10's of thousands of hits.
    - codexon 13y ago
      It was a need that people had, but there was no chance of making a profit without the good will of Reddit users trying to help them get ad views and bury submissions from other image dumps. The founder also made a thread claiming it was a "gift" to Reddit while also saying the same thing to Digg.
  - Mizza 13y ago
    I've met Alan a few times - he told me he was in college when he started it, and the original imgur was run off of a server in his dorm room, and he later moved to a CDN run by somebody else he met on reddit. He's a cool guy, really humble on the rumble.
- SwellJoe 13y ago
  I remember the post that launched imgur. It really was a scratch your own itch kind of thing. So many redditors complained about the crappy image sharing sites...lots of them were verboten to use on reddit because they were so spammy, or slow, or whatever. There was no clear leader in the image sharing space. Facebook was impossible (because it wants to own every user and won't let you show someone something without logging in), even if it were an acceptable place to upload weird random pictures (I know many people who do, but they just don't know about reddit and imgur yet). So...imgur's founder saw a very clear need, and humbly pointed redditors to it. It took off because it was amazing in its simplicity and sincerity. imgur's founder clearly wanted you to share funny pictures in imgur, even if he couldn't figure out how to make it pay him money for every image. He just wanted to solve a very real problem that caused millions of people tiny amounts of pain. (When picking a problem, pick one that causes either a few people a lot of pain, or one that causes a lot of people a little bit of pain. You're unlikely to find a problem that causes a lot of people a lot of pain, since those are already usually very competitive.)
  - timdiggerm 13y ago
    > Facebook was impossible (because it wants to own every user and won't let you show someone something without logging in) Well that's not true. Just get the image url and you're good to go.
    - code_duck 13y ago
      Facebook denies images based on their privacy controls even if you are viewing a .jpg URL. People try to share those links often on a forum on which I'm a member, and when you view the link not logged in to FB or not connected to the proper proper 'friend', you receive a 'this content is not currently available' message.
  - yxhuvud 13y ago
    Well, they are either very competetive or extremely hard to solve. Think cancer.
    - 13y ago
- erichurkman 13y ago
  Others tried and largely failed. Min.us, photobucket, ... were all OK at 10 or 20 viewers, but when you hit the front page, the top-rated post was an Imgur mirror that [usually] responded to direct .png/.jpg links without fault.
- lazyjones 13y ago
  > There was a clear demand for free image hosting that is easy to work with, and imgur fit the bill. There are plenty of these around, so I doubt it was being free and simple that made them "win" (we have an ad-free one with even simpler UI, for example). There were 2 factors that contributed most to their success in my opinion: a) being used much on Reddit, b) being awesome at implementing many useful, well-designed features. Without a), they would probably still have won this race, but at a much slower pace.
  - Terretta 13y ago
    On the contrary: - low latency (images served instantly) - no ads (initially) - upload, get link Initially there were zero features. The pace was entirely based on serving images fast. Everything else you think of imgur came later.
beambot 13y ago
What part of their success shouldn't you emulate? Are you suggesting people shouldn't do side projects because they might not be wildly successful? That doesn't sound like good advice. Sure, if you never try, you can never fail -- but you can also never succeed.
- TheBiv 13y ago
  Solid questions and the point that is a risky piece to be emulated is the only have one thing.

001sky 13y ago

Aside from the traffic milestone, another crop of impressive Imgur numbers involves the amount of funding the company has taken, which is exactly zero since launching in 2006. The company is also profitable, and it has been since about a year after the site launched. Interesting to see where this goes.[1] It is a great story. [1] see, eg: http://techcrunch.com/2007/05/07/myspace-to-acquire-photobucket-for-250-million/ http://techcrunch.com/2007/05/07/myspace-to-acquire-photobuc...

adventured 13y ago

Imgur solved a problem for Reddit the same way TwitPic solved a problem for Twitter. I think it's a testament to Reddit that - unlike Twitter - they didn't feel like they needed to consume image hosting for their platform. It also spurred the growth of the meme sites. I'm sure Reddit will spawn more large niche sites yet.

agumonkey 13y ago
For some heavily graphical subreddits (r/funny and such) the imgur subcategory is almost better, you skim faster through a gallery than through titles list.

thejosh 13y ago

I remember when this started, and I was amazed that the guy was willing to risk massive fees for little reward (at the time). Very happy they have grown it into what it is today - fast, clean and stable. It's what imageshack could have been.

Pxtl 13y ago
Exactly. When I first saw Imgur, my immediate reaction was "nice site, but this guy is going to bankrupt himself in a few months - look at the horrible ways other image-sharers have to abuse their users to stay profitable". I didn't think it was sustainable. Shows what I know.
bostonpete 13y ago
I vaguely recall this as well. Wasn't there a migration to imgur in response to some backlash against an alternative service that was doing something that pissed off redditors? Or maybe I'm thinking of a different controversy...

treelovinhippie 13y ago

I've always thought Reddit as a community and platform was massively under-leveraged. So what other problems do Redditors have? My Reddit experience these days seems to be nothing more than using RES to scroll through images. I miss the good old days of in-depth discussions that were across the site and not just pushed into subreddits.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
baq 13y ago
you want to be in a moderated subreddit (e.g. r/askscience), there's too many people for an interesting discussion otherwise.
redthrowaway 13y ago
> So what other problems do Redditors have? Ironically, content discovery. Reddit's biggest problem is that the big subreddits are incredibly homogenous, and the small ones incredibly slow. If you want to read good, in-depth analysis of world affairs, then you'd better agree with the popular sentiment on /r/worldnews or /r/truereddit. If you don't, you're SOL. Often, the good content you find is in the comments. However, this necessitates digging through thousands of comments that are generally low-content. This causes pain. Want to solve a problem redditors have? Find a way to separate the wheat from the chaff.
- idProQuo 13y ago
  > Reddit's biggest problem is that the big subreddits are incredibly homogenous, and the small ones incredibly slow. There's definitely middle ground though. /r/DepthHub is pretty good at aggregating solid comments. And there's good debate on subs like /r/ChangeMyView and /r/NeutralPolitics. Admittedly, these subs don't refresh as fast as /r/worldnews, but there's usually new content every day.
- TillE 13y ago
  There's no "good, in-depth analysis" of anything on the default subreddits, regardless of your political leanings. The whole demographic and mentality has shifted towards younger and younger teenagers. What you really need is reddit for adults, a site with an entirely different culture that leaves the memes and unfunny jokes behind in favor of encouraging actual conversation on any given topic.

Lrigikithumer 13y ago

I think a bit tribute to Imgur's success is the fact that it has the same content as reddit's front page, just a lot less of the internal politics and bitter comments that tend to drive people away from the site.

codexon 13y ago

The reason why Imgur got so big was because all the other image upload providers started monetizing themselves by blocking direct links and limiting traffic. No one else wanted to be stuck with huge bandwidth bills on hard to monetize reddit visitors where most of them have adblock. For some reason people feel obligated to link to the Imgur page instead of directly to the image. This allows Imgur to make money off the ads on the page. Maybe this is because the founder made it seem like he made the site just to solve Reddit's image hosting problems for free(he also made a similar announcement on Digg). Without this support and the growth of unlimited bandwidth servers, I don't think Imgur would have became so big. If they decide to disallow hotlinking or add more intrusive ads, another replacement would pop up. This is probably why the founder wants to focus on getting revenue in a different way.

deleted 13y ago
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- deleted 13y ago
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stdgy 13y ago
I'd like to add that they also provide many useful features, like nice album views and bulk downloads. And I suspect those useful features, combined with the eye-friendly design, help make people much more likely to paste non-direct links.
- codexon 13y ago
  But the question is: Would those other image dumps would have stopped putting in hotlink protection if they knew people would change back to non-direct links? Or is it because the founder of imgur told people he made imgur just to help Reddit users? Before imgur, most links were direct. The answer to this question should be interesting to entrepreneurs here: Is it a good strategy to create a business for a large social network under the pretense of public good? Is the sheer number of users more important than how monetizable they are and the likelihood they will reciprocate?

Maxious 13y ago

Relevant reddit links: http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/7zlyd/my_gift_to_reddit_i_created_an_image_hosting http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/7zlyd/my_gift_to... (2009 - launch of imgur after 2 months of side project coding) http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/9tlwi/im_the_imgur_guy_ama/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/9tlwi/im_the_imgur_guy... (2010) http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/y81ju/i_created_imgur_ama/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/y81ju/i_created_imgur_... (2011) http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/eicjf/im_the_imgur_guy_ama_part_two/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/eicjf/im_the_imgur_guy... (2012)

GuiA 13y ago

I remember having that itch a few years before imgur happened; I shared a lot of screenshots with friends. I wrote a PHP script that did fast upload with a minimalistic look and popped in on a server and bought a domain name for it; it got used pretty heavily in my group of nerdy high school/college friends. But I never gave it any more thought, and just open sourced it a few years later (it's on my github I believe).

Sir_Cmpwn 13y ago

If you guys do want an alternative, I'm struggling to get MediaCrush [1] more popular. It's a lot better [2], but imgur is imgur. The hardest part is that Reddit (admins and moderators, that is) is actively supportive of imgur and actively hostile towards alternatives. [1] https://mediacru.sh https://mediacru.sh [2] https://blog.mediacru.sh/2013/07/19/MediaCrush-for-nerds.html https://blog.mediacru.sh/2013/07/19/MediaCrush-for-nerds.htm...

Mizza 13y ago
I found a bug: http://i.imgur.com/AvcOQXE.png http://i.imgur.com/AvcOQXE.png (I wasn't trying to be snarky by using imgur - it's just that you guys don't allow paste from clipboard yet and I'm on linux)
- Sir_Cmpwn 13y ago
  Which browser? I'm on Linux and you can paste URLs on Chromium. Not on Firefox. Pasting images is half done.
  - Mizza 13y ago
    That's not the bug. The bug is that it says 'undefined'
    - Sir_Cmpwn 13y ago
      Well, in any case, I need some steps to reproduce if I hope to fix it.
    - jdiez17 13y ago
      It might be because we use `window.location.origin` to determine the media URL. This[1] post on StackOverflow suggest that only browsers based on Webkit or FF 21 and higher have it. What browser are you using? Can you please file an issue on GitHub[2] with as much information as possible so we can look into it? [1] http://stackoverflow.com/a/6167979/379195 http://stackoverflow.com/a/6167979/379195 [2] https://github.com/MediaCrush/MediaCrush/issues https://github.com/MediaCrush/MediaCrush/issues

ck2 13y ago

... and is just as unprofitable ? Not that profit is everything but are they losing money daily?

AlisdairO 13y ago
The article states they've been in profit since a year after operations began.
danielsamuels 13y ago
You can tell who didn't read the article before commenting.

gopalv 13y ago

imgur succeeded because you could press arrow-keys and browse through their most-viral dumps.

moozeek 13y ago

He started out with PHP (Kohana framework AFAIR), wonder if they still use it...

sequoia 13y ago

My take on why imgur is on top (I've been using & evangelizing it for a couple years): They initially picked one thing (image hosting) and did everything possible to remove barriers & friction to getting that task done. Ways to upload to imgur include clicking upload button, using file dialog; dragging and dropping onto the webpage; OSX dashboard widget (used this one when I was on mac); windows context menu (right click send to imgur); chrome extension; FF extension; bash script; wordpress plugin... basically any way you can think of, you can put images on imgur quickly. Oh and not blocking 3rd party referrers, and actually doing a good job of handling images makes a big difference. To the latter point: I was uploading images from iOS to wordpress but the orientation was in the EXIF data. WP ignored this so my images were rotated the wrong way... use `convert` to fix them 1x1 = pain in the ass. Select images, drag/drop onto desktop, group as album... surprise surprise: imgur orients the pictures properly automatically. The UX on imgur is what I'd call a case study of good UX, basically the best I've seen on any website. Kudos to imgur, they deserve all the success they're getting. /fanrant

Peroni 13y ago
Absolutely, 100% in agreement. It took me less than 5 seconds to upload this image and get my hands on a unique, neat URL leading to said image: http://i.imgur.com/1o3iJe1.gif http://i.imgur.com/1o3iJe1.gif The process: * Type: imgur.com & hit enter * Drag image from desktop and drop * Hit enter * Click (optional) * Done. No prompts to log in or create an account. No need to navigate to an 'upload' button. No prompts to share on various social media sites. No intrusive adverts. The sheer simplicity and convenience is immense.
- 8ig8 13y ago
  With great power comes great responsibility. Probably not worth worrying too much, but it is important to keep in mind the terms of the site. Your cute or clever meme may end up on a T-shirt. > With regard to any file or content you upload to the public portions of our site, you grant Imgur a non-exclusive, royalty- free, perpetual, irrevocable worldwide license (with sublicense and assignment rights) to use, to display online and in any present or future media, to create derivative works of, to allow downloads of, and/or distribute any such file or content. To the extent that you delete a such file or content from the public portions of our site, the license you grant to Imgur pursuant to the preceding sentence will automatically terminate, but will not be revoked with respect to any file or content Imgur has already copied and sublicensed or designated for sublicense. Also, of course, anything you post to a public portion of our site may be used by the public pursuant to the following paragraph even after you delete it. http://imgur.com/tos http://imgur.com/tos

dvliman 13y ago

though I can't figure out how they monetize imgur..

theklub 13y ago

Countdown to imgur buy out...

Miyamoto 13y ago

Two questions: 1. Why is imgur not #1 on Google when I search for "image hosting". Postimage.org has that, but they take far less traffic than imgur. 2. When will we get video hosting that is as easy to use as imgur? That means not having to register to upload and share videos.

gcb0 13y ago

Makes one think decent image sharing is still an unsolved problem that any half done solution grows very fast. who here even heard about Game Neverending? ...what about Flickr?

dbuder 13y ago

What happens if they lose their default usage on reddit, just like quickmeme did? I'm not saying that will happen or that imgur hasn't reached the point where it isn't solely reliant on reddit, but it surely is a big risk to any valuation.